TRUCE

Sad to say, I never had a friend till I went to school and Martin. There were my two older brothers but no friends at the family nursery. Maybe the racial bar did it. Perhaps being a son of the owner was the cause. Or maybe just because I was shy. But once at school opportunities slowly grew as I settled in and it became my life and my primary society. Richard LeFevre was a good friend and alley but he came later.

No: I couldn’t class him as my first ever friend. Richard came as part of a pair: Richard and Martin. Martin and Richard: the two demon cartoonists. Or was that Martin and Duncan? Most of the early seventies is lost now to holes in my brain, but I guess I must have got to know Richard through Martin. That would be it.

After Martin and me had that falling out over love, Richard endured, almost to the very end of my school days, the last of the good life. We lived in the same small village and he was an only child. We were a marriage of convenience in a way.

As a young teenager he worked in a pub, before opening time. I’d hang around with him, maybe help a little. The strong smell of stale beer grips my senses even now, ushering up those long term memories again. That’s real beer. Not gay beer.

But back to Martin. One time he found himself invited back to my parent’s home in London and my weekend residence away from school. I’d been to his in Pinner by then. His room was a sea of wealth and destruction, broken and unbroken toys all jumbled up together obliterating his bedroom floor. In London, toys were in shorter supply but we had a dressing up box. Theatrical parents I suppose. Now all the kids have them. They have everything.

I still remember Martin standing in the windowless corridor between our bedrooms at the very attic of the house, dressed as a wench, his blond hair resting on the shoulders of his blue serving maids dress. He might have been nine or so, I can’t remember. But however you looked at him he had the face of a boy. Not good looking. Just ordinary, apart, that is, from those large, dark, conversational eyebrows.

And to think we fell out over love. On the Saturday evening I locked the door to my room and jumped into bed with him. He didn’t seem to mind. It seemed to me to be an exciting thing to do at the time. I just jumped into bed with him. That was all. I never knew why my mother was so furious at being barred entrance to the room. Maybe she knew more than I did, even back then. It just seemed like an exciting thing to do.

One day in school Martin announced to me with hyper solemn eyebrows that he had news, and come play time we would have to talk. Well it was love. Her name was Caroline. She was in our class. I’d barely clocked her before, but soon I was in love with her too. I didn’t want to miss out on the being in love thing, even though I had and I wasn’t. I didn’t get anywhere with her either. We were just kids playing after all but she soured it, or rather I did. And that was that. That was that.

Years later, in our early teens the Caroline affair and I suppose more so the bed hopping event, had their corollary, with fairly good natured poof jibes coming from the Martin/Duncan axis.

And then finally I remember Martin asking me about my first real girlfriend, Francesca, with a kind of wonder in his voice, like I’d actually got me one. The jibes were never spoken again like they’d never been spoken before. Like they had never been. And that was that: after seven years, a truce. But that’s all it was. All it ever was.

WORDS: 679

NATTER

“Yes. And without even opening the box.” Said Catherine.
“It’s like a bit of Las Vegas by the sea.” Said Helen.
“Bournmouth’s the entertainment hub for the whole of the West. I mean Torquey is all very well if you want to look at the same bit of art for six months but…”
“Well. You know I prefer the cinema.”
“Well yes, of course.”
“You get to take the weight off your feet for an hour or two.” Helen shifted the receiver a bit while she spoke. She was getting a crick in the neck. This had gone on and on.
“Yes.” Said Cathrine.
Blue
“Although you never really know what you’re getting.”
“I just look at the blurb in the freebee and try to read between the lines. Actually that’s not true. I just follow the herd. Not much point watching a film no one else wants to watch. You can tell them about it but they won’t really know what you’re talking about unless they’ve been there.”
“Unless they’ve seen it, yes.”
“Yes. Unless they’ve seen it. Otherwise it’s a bit of a non discussion. Like talking to yourself with someone else in the room.”
Black
“Mind you, I talk to myself.”
“Not with someone else in the room.”
“Well, no. It’s the first sign of madness isn’t it, talking to yourself?”
“First sign of madness, Helen.”
“Call me crazy.”
“Crazy Helen.”
“Thanks.” Said Helen.
Blue
“Could be worse.”
“Oh I don’t know. I wouldn’t fancy it myself.”
“You don’t know till you’ve tried Helen. I think I’m cracking sometimes.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“The school is driving me nuts.”
Black
“Really?”
“The PTA.”
“Oh yes. That. Father McFearson says that most parents are bastards.”
“He Does Not!” Said Helen, genuinely shocked. “Oh Cathrine really. Father McFearson’s a very nice man.
Blue
“Oh I don’t know. Nice like Christopher you mean?”
“Of course. He’s gorgeous. Your husband I mean, not Father…” There was a long pause: the kind you can get away with face to face, sitting in the same room together. “Cathrine?” Said Helen.
Black
“Laurence of Arabia was gorgeous and he was a sadist.”
“He was a masochist.” Helen corrected her. “Burning matches and all that. I saw the film. We saw it together didn’t we? You want to see something next week?”
Blue
“Helen I can’t. I’m...” There was another pause. “I’m busy.” While the tears ran down her face.
Black
“Cathrine. What’s wrong?”
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LIFE IS VALUELESS

“And now for yesterday’s weather forecast for London. The day will begin clear, becoming cloudy during the early part of the afternoon. Temperatures will kick off around 2C and increase marginally to about 3C by late afternoon. There will be an overnight zero.”
Thomas clicked off the radio. For years he had accepted the habit of News forever telling him what was about to happen (today the Prime Minister will deliver a speech to the CBI in which he will say… etc.) but “Yesterday’s Weather” struck him as completely pointless. Not only that, despite its claim to be “always on the money” sponsored as it was by PaddyPower, it was not in fact always on the money. Far from it. A case in point: yesterday morning had been frosty. Surely there should have been mention of it. They most definitely should not have started the day at 2C. When Thomas had whinged to Greg about the lack of frost in the forecast, his oldest friend had shouted at him: “Who the fuck cares?” But if no one cared then where would the world be? It was the principle of the thing. That’s how Thomas had seen it.
Then there was “How Do You Feel Right Now?” where opinionistas would tell the nation how to react to the latest news, news that on occasion had not as yet happened. The little girl trapped up a tree over night by her snagged pony tale we were to feel immense sympathy and compassion for, although we were to feel anger at her mother, possibly because she was not married and also because she was out buying £12 worth of lottery tickets on the same day that the incident occurred. We were also to find the tale slightly and naughtily amusing even though the child in question had come out of it with frostbite.
Thomas wondered sometimes if the media was intentionally playing with his mind. Didn’t KFC offer some of their food in a family sized bucket? Wasn’t a bucket something you vomited into? Now we are being asked to eat from one. And then there was McDonalds: Being market leaders they had been serving burgers and fries in airline sick bags for years.
Thomas knew better than most that the only way to break even in business was to sell something costing almost nothing at an eye blistering price. He had once tried to run a café himself and failed. Shops like Poundland, The 99 Pence Shop and in Birmingham The 98 Pence Shop (going for the competitive edge) were embarrassing and eye opening exceptions to the rule. And yet in a way they were not exceptions. As far as Thomas was concerned they were as confusing as the bottle of water costing 80 pence when it was almost free from a tap. Price and value seemed to bare little relation to one another any more. Perhaps, he conjectured, they never had. And yet here he was attempting pathetically to ascribe value to yesterdays weather, surely a worthless commodity.
Finally and after much consideration Thomas came up with a foolproof plan. He managed to get himself prescribed an antipsychotic. It could have been any number of drugs but his Doctor gave him the cheapest generic phenothiazine on the market. Thomas realised that after the usual running in period, and once production of dopamine2 had been blocked in his brain, the world would either look just as insane as it had always done, in which case he would be sane, or it would look normal, in which case he would not be.
Too late for him he realised that either way it was going to be ugly.

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